


What Did We Do?

by SurroundedByDemons



Series: Anastasia: What Once Was [1]
Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Blood and Violence, Child Death, Child Murder, Confrontations, F/M, Ghosts, Gun Violence, Historians agree that OTMAA only had one crime against them; being born a Romanov, I hope, Implied/Referenced Suicide, This is really sad, their murders were unnecessary and the excuse they used for killing the girls was just an excuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurroundedByDemons/pseuds/SurroundedByDemons
Summary: Anastasia accepting her fate wasn't the only thing she said to Gleb.





	What Did We Do?

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE CONTINUING ON WITH THE SERIES: 
> 
> Gleb could not have seen the Romanov family so close as to notice the colour of Anastasia's eyes without being one of the guards. It's a hard historical fact; no Bolshevik had their family in Ekaterinburg at the time. The musical which wanted to be historically accurate-although with the slight difference that Anastasia lived-got facts wrong and the series I am writing corrects those mistakes. So stop correcting me! The musical got things wrong, and I am fixing it, everything you see in the series is historically correct except for Gleb, Dmitri, Lily and Vladimir's existences and Anastasia's survival.

"Gleb?"

He looked over his shoulder at her.

Was she Anya? Was she Anastasia?

It didn't matter anymore, but one thing was for sure: Anastasia died in the early morning of 18th July, 1918, and then she was reborn as the amnesiac orphan Anya. They were one in the same.

But right now, staring dead in the eye, he saw Anastasia with her father's cornflower blue eyes and mother's Hessian features. They said she would grow to be as lovelier than her sisters, and they couldn't be more right.

"Yes?"

He wanted to leave. He didn't trust himself not to turn around and send a bullet straight into her forehead, ending the Romanov lineage. But there was no point. She had two aunts-Xenia and Olga-still alive, and with them their sons and daughters and grandchildren. They still carried the legacy of Alexander III and Nicholas I. Uncles and cousins of Nicholas II still lived, and one had the audacity to claim he was Tsar now that Nicholas, his son and brother were dead. Wasn't he the one who proudly marched through St. Petersburg-Leningrad, as it was called now-claiming that he endorsed the Provisional government? Instead of finding some means to protect the Throne, including all the rights and privileges that flowed with it. In so doing, he breached his "Oath of Allegiance", which he enunciated in the Church before witnesses.

Treason, and that kicked him out of the succession. He was already out of the succession apparently to reports because his mother's refusal to give up her Lutheran faith until 1908. It didn't change the fact that she had stripped her children of their rights, according to a report ordered by Nicholas himself.

Anastasia was the only Romanov alive who hadn't broken the succession rules in anyway (except her first cousins, but who knew that all of them would either marry morganically or see their sons marry a commoner?). The only one she couldn't break was asking the Tsar before marrying a Russian citizen-Royal or not-because her father was dead.

The death of Anastasia was pointless, now.

"What did we do?"

Her question caught him off guard.

"Your father-"

_"No."_

Her sharp tone surprised him. "What did  _we_  do?"

He understood her question now, and it teared him up inside when he thought about his answer.

 _Her sisters._ She was talking about her _sisters._ _They had committed no crime against the people._

Neither had the Tsarevich, the more he thought about it.

Had he participated in the execution of innocent people, their only crime being born into a world of titles and riches?

He understood why a few guards stepped out at the last minute; they didn't want to kill the girls, but not because they had crushes on them. Because they understood they had done nothing to warrant such a death.

Why had it taken him so long to realise? Was he too focused on ending Nicholas' lineage forever, his hatred towards the Romanovs and everything they stood for, that he hadn't taken a few seconds to stop and  _think_  about why he was chasing a girl who was as innocent as a newborn?

Why he had killed three girls and their brother?

Olga had been quiet, withdrawn even, and had been seen regularly staring out into the distance, her thoughts on something no one could predict. She always looked sad, and Gleb wouldn't have been surprised if one day they found her hanging from the rafters. He and the other guards believed she only stayed put for her sister, Tatiana.

Tatiana had exceeded his expectations; he had heard rumours of a cold girl exactly like her mother, but instead was welcomed to a warm, flirtatious woman who became pale at such inappropriate remarks and treated the guards more like their old, Imperial guards back at Tsarskoe Selo, but in a good way.

Maria had been the definition of an angel; her big, dark blue eyes could entrance any man. He couldn't help but smile whenever she was nearby, and most guards talked about asking the Tsar for her hand and when he said 'no', whisk her away in the middle of the night. They wouldn't make it to the front door.

Alexei, when he wasn't bedridden, was a kind and sensible boy. Gleb knew he had some sort of illness, and he couldn't help feel a little pity for him whenever he saw him in his wheelchair. If he had known why the former Tsarevich was spoiled and a little obnoxious years prior, he wouldn't have felt satisfaction seeing the bruised, bloody boy laying death at Yakov's feet.

He wasn't as effected by their deaths as most of the men in the execution squad, or even Anastasia herself.

A part of him was glad that he had found the Grand Duchess, but the other wished she would never have remembered her first seventeen years of life, and not because they could have been together if the first words out of her mouth was _"I'm not Anastasia"._

 But because she could remember everything he and the others had done to them.

-Olga's head smashing against the wall as the bullet pierced her jaw.-

"I-"

-Tatiana crumpling to the floor, limp, as the bullet went through the back of her head.-

"I-I-"

-Maria screaming in fear, and possible anger, as she repeatedly hit Ermakov as he kept bringing the bayonet down into her jewelled chemise.-

"I do-"

-Anastasia had been clutching at her injured sister, shrieking in fear, the last time he had saw her alive until ten years later. He had lost sight of her that night in the smoke caused by the guns.-

"I don't-"

-Alexei clawing at his father's coat as multiple feet kicked his body until Yakov, seeing the torture they were putting him through and the only one to know the severeness of his illness, sent three bullets into his ear, putting him out of his misery.-

Gleb had stood in the middle of the room, watching guards run out of the room to throw up at the carnage inside. Yakov Yurovsky, the man who was behind the execution in the first place, had been horrified at the savagery of Ermakov, drunk like most of the executioners, who had spent the rest of his life bragging about his involvement in their murders. Some of the guards not wanting to participate had been ordered to look after the bodies while they went to check on the truck.

Gleb hadn't been present when the bodies were wrapped up in the family's sheets, thrown into the trunk-alongside the bodies of Tatiana and Anastasia's dogs, Jimmy and Ortino, the latter having been killed when he had ran down the stairs to search for his mistress. Ermakov had stabbed him with his bayonet and thrown the whimpering body into the trunk, shouting 'Only death to the dogs!'-and transported to the burial site. All bodies were thrown into a mine, blown up, then hours later dumped into another hole when drunk guards had blabbed about the burial place.

Apparently to what he had been told, a problem had popped up and they had to change the already planned out burial, and two bodies had been removed and burnt-not properly, they couldn't burn two bodies in the span of a few hours-before being buried someplace else.

No one, except for the guards present, knew that the 'problem' was the missing body of one of the girls, more specifically Anastasia.

Had she fallen out of the back of the truck? Had one of those empathetic guards saved her? 

No, she had stumbled out of moving truck and had walked blindly, ending up passing out on the side of the road before being found by a passing citizen and taken to a hospital in Perm. Why they had taken her there instead of Ekaterinburg, the nearest city, was self explainable.

"I don't know."

"Do you have any idea?" Anya's-no, _Anastasia's_ -eyes were burning.

"No."

"If you hesitated like you just did now, would they still be alive?"

He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "I'm just one person."

When he opened them he wished he hadn't.

Olga stood next to Anastasia, on her right, blood dripping from her jaw, her light blue eyes glassy and milky. Her blonde hair was matted with blood, sticking to her head from where the bullet had exited.

Tatiana stood behind her youngest sister, towering over her at 5'9 to her now fully grown 5'6, blood running down her face from the exit wound from the bullet that had been sent into the back of her head and out the other side. Gleb shivered at the similarities between the sisters, both inheriting their mother's German features, and his mind imagined Anastasia in her place.

Maria was the worst; standing on Anastasia's left side, her face was barely recognisable. Her once beautiful Russian face was now crushed, blood covered and frankly looked disgusting to look at. She had been the one to sit up and scream when being carried out; Ermakov was the only one out of the now yelling group of men-'She's a witch!' and 'God is protecting her!' before running out-to grab his gun and begin smashing her face with the end of it until she grew still one last time. Had she pretended to be dead, would she have lived?

Maybe. Maybe Anastasia wouldn't have been as lonely.

All girls blouses were ripped where the bayonets had pierced their clothes, trying to kill them but failing to, because of the jewels sewn into the chemises and pillows, protecting them from their death. They all should have died instantly by bullets to the heart, but how would they know that the jewels they were originally going to sell when they were free would deflect the bullets? 

Alexei, at 5'3, stood in front of his favourite sister, blood pouring from one side of his face, his grey eyes full of sadness, a complete contrast to what he had been in life. Alexei had promised to change Russia for the best, and for once Gleb believed him.

Russia never gave Tsar Alexei II and his promise a chance.

His eyes widened when he noticed their lips beginning to move, and the four began to croak; _What did we do? What did we do? What did we do? What did we do?_

Wordlessly, he turned and walked out of the room, the voices of the dead circling in his mind;

_What did we do?_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm never going to write an Anya/Gleb romance fic. Gleb is a cold-blooded murder, and doesn't deserve the love he gets. Frankly, people who try and perceive him as innocent don't deserve to write any about the Romanovs, considering it's shitting on their memories, especially Anastasia's, when they pair a Bolshevik general who murdered her entire family-might I add, who also briefly tortured a thirteen year old haemophiliac boy in that basement as well-who felt no remorse for what he did with the survivor of that barbaric execution.
> 
> If you don't like that, not my problem.


End file.
